Bab Bab 6 · 第6章

Early one morning, some few months after the departure of the unlucky

Countess who had managed to live for six months at the widow’s expense,

Mme. Vauquer (not yet dressed) heard the rustle of a silk dress and

a young woman’s light footstep on the stair; some one was going to

Goriot’s room. He seemed to expect the visit, for his door stood ajar.

The portly Sylvie presently came up to tell her mistress that a girl too

pretty to be honest, “dressed like a goddess,” and not a speck of mud

on her laced cashmere boots, had glided in from the street like a snake,

had found the kitchen, and asked for M. Goriot’s room. Mme. Vauquer

and the cook, listening, overheard several words affectionately spoken

during the visit, which lasted for some time. When M. Goriot went

downstairs with the lady, the stout Sylvie forthwith took her basket

and followed the lover-like couple, under pretext of going to do her

marketing.

“M. Goriot must be awfully rich, all the same, madame,” she reported

on her return, “to keep her in such style. Just imagine it! There was a

splendid carriage waiting at the corner of the Place de l’Estrapade, and

_she_ got into it.”

While they were at dinner that evening, Mme. Vauquer went to the window

and drew the curtain, as the sun was shining into Goriot’s eyes.

“You are beloved of fair ladies, M. Goriot--the sun seeks you out,” she

said, alluding to his visitor. “_Peste!_ you have good taste; she was

very pretty.”

“That was my daughter,” he said, with a kind of pride in his voice, and

the rest chose to consider this as the fatuity of an old man who wishes

to save appearances.

A month after this visit M. Goriot received another. The same daughter

who had come to see him that morning came again after dinner, this time

in evening dress. The boarders, in deep discussion in the dining-room,

caught a glimpse of a lovely, fair-haired woman, slender, graceful, and

much too distinguished-looking to be a daughter of Father Goriot’s.

“Two of them!” cried the portly Sylvie, who did not recognize the lady

of the first visit.

A few days later, and another young lady--a tall, well-moulded brunette,

with dark hair and bright eyes--came to ask for M. Goriot.

“Three of them!” said Sylvie.

Then the second daughter, who had first come in the morning to see her

father, came shortly afterwards in the evening. She wore a ball dress,

and came in a carriage.

“Four of them!” commented Mme. Vauquer and her plump handmaid. Sylvie

saw not a trace of resemblance between this great lady and the girl in

her simple morning dress who had entered her kitchen on the occasion of

her first visit.

At that time Goriot was paying twelve hundred francs a year to his

landlady, and Mme. Vauquer saw nothing out of the common in the fact

that a rich man had four or five mistresses; nay, she thought it very

knowing of him to pass them off as his daughters. She was not at all

inclined to draw a hard-and-fast line, or to take umbrage at his sending

for them to the Maison Vauquer; yet, inasmuch as these visits explained

her boarder’s indifference to her, she went so far (at the end of the

second year) as to speak of him as an “ugly old wretch.” When at length

her boarder declined to nine hundred francs a year, she asked him very

insolently what he took her house to be, after meeting one of these

ladies on the stairs. Father Goriot answered that the lady was his

eldest daughter.

“So you have two or three dozen daughters, have you?” said Mme. Vauquer

sharply.

“I have only two,” her boarder answered meekly, like a ruined man who is

broken in to all the cruel usage of misfortune.

Towards the end of the third year Father Goriot reduced his expenses

still further; he went up to the third story, and now paid forty-five

francs a month. He did without snuff, told his hairdresser that he no

longer required his services, and gave up wearing powder. When Goriot

appeared for the first time in this condition, an exclamation of

astonishment broke from his hostess at the color of his hair--a dingy

olive gray. He had grown sadder day by day under the influence of some

hidden trouble; among all the faces round the table, his was the

most woe-begone. There was no longer any doubt. Goriot was an elderly

libertine, whose eyes had only been preserved by the skill of the

physician from the malign influence of the remedies necessitated by the

state of his health. The disgusting color of his hair was a result of

his excesses and of the drugs which he had taken that he might continue

his career. The poor old man’s mental and physical condition afforded

some grounds for the absurd rubbish talked about him. When his outfit

was worn out, he replaced the fine linen by calico at fourteen _sous_

the ell. His diamonds, his gold snuff-box, watch-chain and trinkets,

disappeared one by one. He had left off wearing the corn-flower blue

coat, and was sumptuously arrayed, summer as well as winter, in a coarse

chestnut-brown coat, a plush waistcoat, and doeskin breeches. He grew

thinner and thinner; his legs were shrunken, his cheeks, once so puffed

out by contented bourgeois prosperity, were covered with wrinkles, and

the outlines of the jawbones were distinctly visible; there were deep

furrows in his forehead. In the fourth year of his residence in the Rue

Neuve-Sainte-Genevieve he was no longer like his former self. The hale

vermicelli manufacturer, sixty-two years of age, who had looked scarce

forty, the stout, comfortable, prosperous tradesman, with an almost

bucolic air, and such a brisk demeanor that it did you good to look at

him; the man with something boyish in his smile, had suddenly sunk into

his dotage, and had become a feeble, vacillating septuagenarian.

The keen, bright blue eyes had grown dull, and faded to a steel-gray

color; the red inflamed rims looked as though they had shed tears of

blood. He excited feelings of repulsion in some, and of pity in others.

The young medical students who came to the house noticed the drooping

of his lower lip and the conformation of the facial angle; and, after

teasing him for some time to no purpose, they declared that cretinism

was setting in.

One evening after dinner Mme. Vauquer said half banteringly to him, “So

those daughters of yours don’t come to see you any more, eh?” meaning to

imply her doubts as to his paternity; but Father Goriot shrank as if his

hostess had touched him with a sword-point.

“They come sometimes,” he said in a tremulous voice.

“Aha! you still see them sometimes?” cried the students. “Bravo, Father

Goriot!”

The old man scarcely seemed to hear the witticisms at his expense that

followed on the words; he had relapsed into the dreamy state of mind

that these superficial observers took for senile torpor, due to his lack

of intelligence. If they had only known, they might have been deeply

interested by the problem of his condition; but few problems were more

obscure. It was easy, of course, to find out whether Goriot had really

been a vermicelli manufacturer; the amount of his fortune was readily

discoverable; but the old people, who were most inquisitive as to his

concerns, never went beyond the limits of the Quarter, and lived in

the lodging-house much as oysters cling to a rock. As for the rest, the

current of life in Paris daily awaited them, and swept them away with

it; so soon as they left the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Genevieve, they forgot the

existence of the old man, their butt at dinner. For those narrow souls,

or for careless youth, the misery in Father Goriot’s withered face

and its dull apathy were quite incompatible with wealth or any sort of

intelligence. As for the creatures whom he called his daughters, all

Mme. Vauquer’s boarders were of her opinion. With the faculty for severe

logic sedulously cultivated by elderly women during long evenings of

gossip till they can always find an hypothesis to fit all circumstances,

she was wont to reason thus:

“If Father Goriot had daughters of his own as rich as those ladies who

came here seemed to be, he would not be lodging in my house, on the

third floor, at forty-five francs a month; and he would not go about

dressed like a poor man.”

No objection could be raised to these inferences. So by the end of

the month of November 1819, at the time when the curtain rises on this

drama, every one in the house had come to have a very decided opinion as

to the poor old man. He had never had either wife or daughter; excesses

had reduced him to this sluggish condition; he was a sort of human

mollusk who should be classed among the capulidoe, so one of the dinner

contingent, an _employe_ at the Museum, who had a pretty wit of his own.

Poiret was an eagle, a gentleman, compared with Goriot. Poiret would

join the talk, argue, answer when he was spoken to; as a matter of

fact, his talk, arguments, and responses contributed nothing to the

conversation, for Poiret had a habit of repeating what the others said

in different words; still, he did join in the talk; he was alive, and

seemed capable of feeling; while Father Goriot (to quote the Museum

official again) was invariably at zero degrees--Reaumur.

Eugene de Rastignac had just returned to Paris in a state of mind not

unknown to young men who are conscious of unusual powers, and to those

whose faculties are so stimulated by a difficult position, that for the

time being they rise above the ordinary level.

Rastignac’s first year of study for the preliminary examinations in law

had left him free to see the sights of Paris and to enjoy some of its

amusements. A student has not much time on his hands if he sets himself

to learn the repertory of every theatre, and to study the ins and outs

of the labyrinth of Paris. To know its customs; to learn the language,

and become familiar with the amusements of the capital, he must explore

its recesses, good and bad, follow the studies that please him best, and

form some idea of the treasures contained in galleries and museums.

At this stage of his career a student grows eager and excited about all

sorts of follies that seem to him to be of immense importance. He has

his hero, his great man, a professor at the College de France, paid

to talk down to the level of his audience. He adjusts his cravat, and

strikes various attitudes for the benefit of the women in the first

galleries at the Opera-Comique. As he passes through all these

successive initiations, and breaks out of his sheath, the horizons of

life widen around him, and at length he grasps the plan of society with

the different human strata of which it is composed.